a husband and wife, with features worn away by
time and incapable of expressing the disappointment, the surprise they
may have felt in the vain effort to warm their feet on the backs of the
little marble angels put there to support them. We made what we could,
too, of the noted Casa de Miranda, the most famous of the palaces in
which the Castilian nobles have long ceased to live at Burgos. There we
satisfied our longing to see a _patio,_ that roofless colonnaded court
which is the most distinctive feature of Spanish domestic architecture,
and more and more distinctively so the farther south you go, till at
Seville you see it in constant prevalence. At Burgos it could never have
been a great comfort, but in this House of Miranda it must have been
a great glory. The spaces between many of the columns have long been
bricked in, but there is fine carving on the front and the vaulting of
the staircase that climbs up from it in neglected grandeur. So many feet
have trodden its steps that they are worn hollow in the middle, and to
keep from falling you must go up next the wall. The object in going up
at all is to join in the gallery an old melancholy custodian in looking
down into the _patio,_ with his cat making her toilet beside him, and to
give them a fee which they receive with equal calm. Then, when you have
come down the age-worn steps without breaking your neck, you have done
the House of Miranda, and may lend yourself with what emotion you choose
to the fact that this ancient seat of hidalgos has now fallen to the low
industry of preparing pigskins to be wine-skins.

[Illustration: 06 THE TOMB OF DONNA MARIA MANUEL]

I do not think that a company of hidalgos in complete medieval armor
could have moved me more strongly than that first sight of these
wine-skins, distended with wine, which we had caught in approaching the
House of Miranda. We had to stop in the narrow street, and let them pass
piled high on a vintner's wagon, and looking like a load of pork: they
are trimmed and left to keep the shape of the living pig, which they
emulate at its bulkiest, less the head and feet, and seem to roll in
fatness. It was joy to realize what they were, to feel how Spanish, how
literary, how picturesque, how romantic. There they were such as the
wine-skins are that hang from the trees of pleasant groves in many a
merry tale, and invite all swains and shepherds and wandering cavaliers
to tap their bulk and drain its rich plethora.